Page 42 - (DK) How to be a GENIUS?

Cerebral cortex
Analyzes and relates
smells and tastes

Olf factory bulb
Ga athers scent
signals and passes
them to the brain

Your senses of taste and smell are closely connected,
r
and they both help you enjoy your food. But your sense
e
of smell is vital in other ways. It alerts you to danger
and helps you recognize familiar places, things, and evven
ve
n
people. Your brain reacts surprisingly strongly to smell,
l
especially smells that you memorized long ago.

Taste bud Olfactory
receptors
Taste pore
Taste hair Detect scent
mol
molecules in
mol ecu le es s in
in
ecul
Most of the receptor cells that detect taste are
the air
concentrated on the tongue in clusters called
taste buds. There are around 10,000 of these,
each containing 50 to 100 banana-shaped
cells with tiny “taste hairs” at the top. When
you eat, saliva and dissolved food seep into
each taste bud through a tiny pore. The cells
react to chemicals in the food by sending
nerve impulses to the brain.
Nerve fiber
Taste
receptor cell
Nasal
chamber
Simple tastes
Your taste buds can distinguish
between only five taste sensations:
salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umani
(savory). This combination is too
limited to account for all the different
SALTY li
tastes that you experience, and this is
R
because your sense of smell also plays an SOUR
important role in “tasting” your food. Infections
Tongue
such as colds and the flu can make you
l
temporarily lose your sense of smell—
and then you find that you cannot
taste much either.

Nerve fibers
SWEET Gather data from
taste buds
BITTER
T

40
UMANI
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